From: Adam <""4thwormcastfromthemolehill\"{at}the field.near
the bridge">

George Sherwood wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Aug 2006 13:22:35 +0200, Phil Payne wrote:
>
>> There are some clever buggers out there, who are not - by and large - as
>> corrupt as the US defence industry.  After all, for all the public funding
>> that's gone into Patriot, you would expect it to actually _work_, wouldn't
>> you? And it bloody doesn't.
>>
>> IMO US grunts on the ground are not getting anything like the tools that
>> have been specced for them and promised to them - let down massively by the
>> industrial/defence complex.
>>
>> The other side has a greater (life/death) incentive.
>
> Phil,
> You are completely speaking out your arse here.  Your knowledge that
> Patriot doesn't work is based on what? Gulf I?  Israel?  How many to you
> think have been fired there?
>

Patriot certainly didn't work. I'll not comment further except to say it
involved a long discussion with a recently former exec of the comp wot made
em.

However I'm sure PAC-3 has sorted most of the AA probs if not the ABM probs.


> I really don't understand Adam's fascination with Russian kit.  The only
> reason people buy it is because it will be sold to any one (talk about
> your corrupt industries, the entire gray market is made up of Russian kit)
> and it is cheap.

ROFLMAO. You pose the question & then answer it. Weapons just have to
be good enough. The T34 was good enough, the AK47 is good enough, the RPG-7
is good enough etc.

Oh cheap & easily available you say.....

So on one hand I've got to meet ollie north & his ilk & on the
other I've just got to head off to some anonymous warehouse somewhere
anonmous with some cash....oh choices, choices....



> I am around their stuff all the time and it sucks.  I
> would like to see what is your real world experience with any sort of
> military kit. Not your usual I had an uncle who once knew something about
> it.  What is your experience that you base these statements on?  I can lay
> mine out for sure and am gaining it on a day to basis.
>

WRT the simpler stuff I think the "real word experience" is seen
day by day e.g. rpg hits on hummers, ak/rpd/dushkas are killing people very
effectively all over the world from NATO soldiers in Afghanistan to
Africans by the million.

This is probably why the Russians are looking to go up the food chain in
the grey market....i.e. coz the simple designs are so good there's lots of
"pirate" copies.....bloody Chinese et al... 

I mean Putin must have got quite a shock that Venezuela wanted to buy ak'es
from Russia....ah well....no lockin wrt suppliers.....

So it depends on the level of "sophistication" as the new RPG'es
are both simple & effective (by all accounts).

I mean....is something like this:

http://world.guns.ru/grenade/gl04-e.htm

Sophisticated or not? Clearly the warhead i.e. the business end is...but
the rest of it can be so cheap as to be disposable. Heck from what I've
seen, the ammunition & the launcher cost about the same.

& now they've got the oil cash to start paying their engineers properly
& gosh even attracting new ones (possibly even back from the US).

So let's test the kit against some known possible threats/examples of what
a modern threat might be like e.g. while there is no possibility of Russia
& Israel being in a ground war...the merkava is a good modern
MBT/maneuvering target..

It'll be more interesting is Challenger 2 & M1 Abrams start picking up hits.

You need to stop looking at these things with the eyes of a man used to the
US Defence budget where the perfect is better than the good & never
mind the cost.

Adam

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